The city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Historical Society have
teamed up to publish an online
database of LA city officials back to 1850. Click
Search Office Holder to search by name. To browse, click an election
year on the left, then click the tabs for elected officials,
committees and appointed officials, and expand the lists in each
category. If you have an ancestor who served as a public official in
LA, you might find it helpful to download the site's Introduction
and User Guide via the links on the left side of the page.

Added to the existing Ancestry.com indexes for Delaware, Maine, New
York, Nevada, Washington DC, this makes 10 searchable states plus DC
for Ancestry.com, and a total of 34 states plus DC across all 1940
census index websites (MyHeritage and FamilySearch with
its 1940 Community Census Project partners). The 1940 census is free
to search on all these sites.

I immediately searched the Ohio index for my grandmother, who I knew
was living with her sister somewhere in Cincinnati in 1940. Right
away I found her and a sister, living with the family of another
sister in a suburb just north of downtown.

This screenshot shows Ancestry.com's new image viewer (still in
beta). A window at the bottom shows transcribed information, and one on the right shows source details (you can make both of these windows disappear
by clicking the double arrows on the green tabs).

When you zoom in and
can no longer see the name column, the indexed names pop out from the left
side—with the person you searched on and his/her household
highlighted—so you can keep track of the rows of names. For several
columns, you can hover over a cell and the transcribed information
will pop up.

I've experienced a few minor glitches when moving around the record image using the new viewer on a Mac.

You can watch a class a day, view them all in a marathon session
(maybe with an iced coffee in hand), or download them to watch
later, as many times as you want—whatever's convenient for you. Then
immediately apply what you learn to your own genealogy research.

In honor of Canada Day,
which celebrates the July 1, 1867, enactment of the British
North American Act uniting three colonies into the country of
Canada, Ancestry.ca is offering free access to 40 million historical
records today through July 2.

The free
records cover the years leading up to and following
Confederation and come from some of the largest collections on
Ancestry.ca, including:

Canadian passenger lists and ocean arrivals: These name the
masses of people who arrived by ship at port cities across Canada

The 1871 Census of Canada: This was the first census Canada
conducted as a nation. It reveals household members, ages, jobs,
parents' birthplaces and more.

Birth, marriage and death records: These come from British Columbia,
Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia.

Military records: These come from the War of 1812 and World War I,
as well as lists of officers from 1832 and 1863 to 1939.

Visit www.ancestry.ca to search the free databases. You'll need to
register for a free Ancestry.ca account to view your full search
results.

Genealogy website MyHeritage
officially launched its new SuperSearch feature
(previously in beta) today. This brings it into more direct competition with genealogy sites offering historical records in addition to online family tree sharing.

SuperSearch, part of the site's subscription offerings, lets you
search records and family trees on MyHeritage. You can run a basic
search or used the advanced search to enter name, relatives' names,
life events (such as birth, marriage or death), and keywords.

The search will translate names and search records in 38 languages.

Record Matching, another new feature still to come, will automatically
search the records and trees for you.

In addition to MyHeritage family trees, types of records searched
include vital records, census records and indexes, military records,
immigration records, school yearbooks, newspapers and historical
books, and more.

The records come from the World Vital Records website, which
MyHeritage purchased last year, as well as MyHeritage's own
additions. New records are being uploaded to the site.

Every day, large numbers of historical records and data are being
added and we also plan to have our time-saving Record Matching
technology up and running in a few weeks. Watch for more information
- we'll let you know when Record Matching is live!

SuperSearch is an exciting new service that adds color to family
history, improves by the day, and which positions MyHeritage as a
top player in the historical content market.

You can run a search and use filters on the left side of the page to
narrow the results to the types of records (census, immigration,
etc) you want to see. Some collections, such as the 1940 census, are
free to view. If you click on a result for a premium collection,
you'll get a prompt to subscribe or upgrade your free MyHeritage
account.

You can read more about SuperSearch in my interview with MyHeritage
founder and CEO Gilad Japhet this past March.

Here's a video that shows you a little more about how SuperSearch
works:

Origins.net, which
has genealogy records subscription sites for British and Irish records,
plus a Scottish
research site, has launched a new records image viewer. It'll allow
easier searching, including for users on Macs.

Did your British ancestor serve in the military? You might be interested in this genealogy website: A British company called Forces Reunited, founded in 2001 by
a military veteran, has launched a military records subscription site
called Forces War
Records.

The site holds more than 4 million British military records from
World Wars I and II, the Boer War (1899-1902), the Crimean War
(1853-1856), African wars (1815-1853) and Napoleonic wars
(1799-1815). Search results are cross-matched to information on more
than 4,000 regiments, bases and ships of the British Armed Forces
dating to before 1350.

You can set up a free account, but you'll need a subscription to see
full details of records matching your search. Subscription prices
range from 25.95 pounds (about $41) for three months to 85.95 pounds
(about $135) for 12 months.

The site has a free search for Prisoners of War (1939-1945), an
index giving you the name of the servicemember, camp, regiment
linked to information about the regiment) and branch of service,
plus a link to search results in the site's other records for that
name.

People claiming German ancestry still outnumber any other heritage
group in the United States—which is why we're offering a new German
Genealogy Value Pack that'll help you trace your German roots
in the United States and in your ancestral homeland.
This Value Pack is full of practical advice for overcoming the
challenges of tracing your German ancestors.

Find Your German Roots
Independent Study Course download, with four lessons to
help you
use genealogical records and more to determine who your German
ancestors were and from where in Germany they came.

A
Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your Germanic Ancestors
e-book download by Chris Anderson and Ernest Thode, with expert
instruction on researching German ancestors.

Tracing German Ancestry in
Eastern Europe download, with guidance on tracing the
German ancestors from Slovakia, Romania, Russia and other places
beyond Deutschland's borders.

Genealogy Cheat Sheet
download, a quick reference designed to deliver the information
you need to understand the records of your German ancestors